Tel-Aviv ready to share counter-terrorist information with Moscow via security services - Knesset committee's head
MOSCOW. Dec 5 (Interfax) - Israel's security services are ready to exchange information regarding countering terrorism with their Russian counterparts, Avi Dichter, the head of the Israeli Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said.
"We are ready to share information with our allies; it's not a problem for us. Terrorism always remains terrorism. The way we define it matches Russia's definition of this occurrence," Dichter in an interview with Interfax.
He headed the Knesset's delegation to Moscow last week.
"I believe all means of fighting terrorism in cooperation with Russia require interaction and information exchange. I have been fighting terrorism since 1971, over 40 years. As far as I know, Europeans have a saying: 'It takes two to tango.' We have a saying in the Middle East: 'It takes two hands to clap,'" he said.
He also commended the work of a Russian-Israeli incident-prevention mechanism. "Russia and we have the mechanism for the prevention of incidents between Israeli and Russian pilots. It is the only level at which we interact. And this mechanism is working very well," he said.
"The incident-prevention mechanism and the hotline on the ground are being used in order to prevent issues if aircraft move too close to each other. We inform the Russian side about such things, your side [informs] us, and we never know if an aircraft belongs to Russia, we need to ask the Russian side about that to prevent any harm," Dichter said.